This long-awaited publication of the collaborative work on Russian Francophonie in the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries by Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjéoutski and Gesine Argent presents a collection of knowledge on the subject on an encyclopedic scale. It is undoubtedly the most comprehensive, systematic and methodologically accomplished study of Russian Francophone culture of its kind and sets a new conceptual matrix for the study of diachronic multilingualism and diglossia using a variety of sources and methodologies.

The applied cross-disciplinary approach places the work at the intersection between intellectual history, ethnography, historiography, literary criticism and sociolinguistics. This allows a full exploration of the multifaceted nature of Franco-Russian bilingualism resulting in a holistic and balanced discussion of the topic from nine aspects, each represented by a separate chapter. The study is based on an extensive corpus of primary sources, many of which were hitherto little known to the academic community, and is supported by a strong theoretical framework informed by the key conceptual developments in the relevant scholarly fields. This carefully synthesized theoretical fusion is the result of a thorough critical evaluation of the existing approaches to the study of similar phenomena, and provides, in turn, a new perspective and methodological approach to the study of historical language contacts, particularly in the period of nation-building.

The theories of nation-building that opened the discussion of the concept of a national language become particularly useful in the analysis of the Russo-French linguistic co-existence. The authors draw upon a range of interpretations of the nation, from the early development of the concept in eighteenth century German philosophy to the modern take on the topic in the seminal works of Benedict Anderson, Antony Smith, and Eric Hobsbawm, subsequently focusing on the concept of the national language, bilingualism, and diglossia. The discussion of the interlink between the formation of the nation and its optimum linguistic representation proves to be particularly productive for the comparative analysis of the role of Russian and French in the development of Russian statehood. The discussion could have perhaps gained some additional theoretical grounding if both languages were looked at through the prism of status-corpus- and acquisition planning which commonly serve as the indicators of the formation of a national language (Bernard Spolsky, Sociolinguistics, 1998), with all three stages clearly discernible in the development of eighteenth-nineteenth century Russian, despite French being a preferred option in a number of official domains, such as diplomacy.

An undisputable scholarly merit of the work is the expansion of the contexts in which the phenomenon of Russian Francophonie is studied. The authors oppose the traditional interpretation of Franco-Russian bilingualism as a unique feature of Imperial Russian culture (see the discussion of Lotman's views on the topic, 49–51). Instead, they insist on taking it out of the narrow framework of the “national” and placing into a broader, transnational context, thus radically changing the perspective of the topic and presenting the Russian case as an integral part of a Pan-European Francophonie. This places the reviewed work itself in the broad context of the contemporary paradigm of transnational studies and paves the way for future diachronic research of transnational sociolinguistic phenomena.

Alongside introducing the global dimension to the study of historical Francophonie The French Language in Russia also signposts some areas for further studies that can potentially stem from and be informed by the book. The authors rightly mention the importance of the research into Francophonie in non-Russophone areas of the Russian Empire (particularly the Caucasus and Siberia). Further and broader discussion of multilingualism in the Russian Empire (partially investigated in the excellent works of Vera Tolz [2011] and Michael G. Smith [1998]), as well as the continued Franco-Russian diglossia during the first post-Revolutionary decades in private correspondence could possibly also be added to this list.

Taking into account the comprehensive, multidisciplinary nature of this study of Francophone Russia, its balanced approach to the analysis of the phenomena as a part of both the national and translational contexts, the wealth and scholarly value of the primary sources that enabled the authors to piece together this most detailed historiography of Franco-Russian bilingualism, and the innovativeness of the methodology that provides a useful tool for future investigations of historical bilingualism, biculturalism and diglossia, The French Language in Russia will become a regular companion to a broad spectrum of specialists and students in arts and humanities, as well as anyone interested in the relevant topics.